Kings Park Junior Zachary Marcone Attends M.I.T. Conference Returns Home With Award

Maureen Rossi

Zachary Marcone looks like your average high school kid but average he is not.  First of all he’s a boy and he does not play video games.  Now that you’ve regained consciousness, the teen defies his species in a myriad of other ways.  He smiles, he makes eye contact and the Kings Park teen can speak extensively on global issues, physics, the fundamental nature of the universe and the use of drones in impoverished countries.

Zachary was recently honored along with other Kings Park students at the school district’s March 25^th Board of Education meeting.  Marcone is the founder and president of the Model United Nations Club at Kings Park High School. He recently won the Best Position Paper Award at a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) Conference.   “There were many different committees, one of those committees was going to be debating drones,” he explained.  

At the M.I.T. conference Zachary represented the the small South African country of Zimbabwe.  It is a complicated country with sixteen official languages and a heritage that is equally diverse.  Zimbabwe gained sovereignty from the United Kingdom back in 1980.   According to organizations like  Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch the government of Zimbabwe violates the rights to shelter, food, freedom of movement and residence, freedom of assembly and the protection of the law. There are aggressions against the media, the political opposition, civil society activists, and human rights defenders.  Zimbabwe does not have a pristine record with regard to human rights.    The nation’s armed forces include approximately twenty-thousand members, their paramilitary presence is equally large with approximately twenty thousand members. 

“I had to decide should there be restrictions on drones – as a small African nation with a declining economy the use of drones might be deemed a threat by larger countries,” he extrapolated.     Marcone felt that the unmanned aerial surveillance technology would be a detriment to Zimbabwe.   “However, from a U.S. perspective, I think that drones are actually a safer form of warfare,” he added.

Drones have made headlines in the U.S. over the last year as declassified information about the nation’s use of them filtered out. Drone use inside the U.S. has become a subject of much debate.  The U.N. does not have a position banning the use of drones but often weighs in on the subject as they have been increasingly utilized on a global level as the technology has advanced. 

According to a recent statement by the U.N., “the lethal use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, came under scrutiny in the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today, as a United Nations human rights expert argued that the internationally recognized rule against arbitrary killing also applied to extraterritorial attacks by such weapons systems”. 

Marcone is fascinated by global issues and really enjoys the club he birthed and the forty members who have since joined.   The high school junior is also involved with the Science Research program as well and is the co-founder of yet another club, Science Olympia.   “We prepare for the Science Olympiad every February, it’s hard to explain what we do but I love the Physics component,” he explained.  Marcone enjoys Physics because he says it encompasses all the sciences.   What’s on the horizon for this teen?   He says he has his eyes set on Columbia or Stanford after he graduates Kings Park High School.

Marcone shared that he has a younger brother in seventh grade.  He credits his extraordinary love of learning to his parents and primarily his mother who took him to so many museums as a child.  “My mom really fostered my love of Science, she would take me to New York City to the planetarium and all the museums, that’s probably what got me interested in learning and Science,” he shared.   He says he has always enjoyed learning new things and when he was a young boy Animal Planet was his favorite television show.   He says his parents are very smart people, his dad is in the Mathematics field and works with statistics and his mother is a stay at home mom.  

Marcone said he plans on going to Board of Education meetings in the future because he found it quite interesting.    Last week he and his mock UN team were in New York City.   He says he loves the people involved in his U.N. club and traveling around, but mostly he loves learning about the issues that shape our geopolitical climate and fate.  

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Zak i love you!